Kashmir’s apple growers are learning to beat the heat
The roads of South Kashmir’s Shopian district are crowded with workers and vehicles. This district is called the apple bowl of Kashmir, and the air here is thick with the aroma of freshly picked fruit. Ladders lean against the trunks of apple trees while workers climb into the clusters of
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How cool is a mosque!
The afternoon sun shone brutally overhead. The few pedestrians kept close to walls and shop fronts, seeking patches of shade. The heat forced most people to stay indoors, making the streets deserted. But Srinagar’s century-old Jamia Masjid seemed to belong to a different world. The sun did not cast its
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Ice, rock and water came tumbling
By the morning of August 26, something gargantuan had taken place high above the river valleys of Nepal. The first clue was a violent tremor. Seismographs registered a signal equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake. For a moment, it looked as though the Himalayas had simply done what they have
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Breathing life back into tanks
Driving through the placid countryside of Kundapura, a coastal taluk in Udupi district, Dr Satish Kamath says he feels deeply fulfilled on seeing a restored kere brimming with water. “It prompts me to revive another,” he remarks. A kere is a manmade earthen tank. For the past seven years, Dr
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Can the Yamuna be revived?
The Yamuna is one of India’s most sacred rivers. But on its 22-km stretch through Delhi, the Yamuna gets reduced to being a polluted drain. Four decades of efforts to restore the river have mostly ended in failure. Delhi, one of India’s richest cities, does to the Yamuna what Indian
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Hangul at 300 and not moving
Wildlife experts are worried about the stagnant population of the hangul or the Kashmir red stag, a sub-species of the elk. It is the state animal of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and listed as a critically endangered animal by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Conservation strategies were
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Great Nicobar: Experts take on minister in joint letter
THE Union government’s plans to convert the Great Nicobar Island into a bustling economic hub has caused deep disquiet among environmentalists, scientists and sociologists. The island, a green jewel in the midst of the blue waters of the Indian Ocean, is part of UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere programme because of
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